Saturday, February 11, 2006

Amazon and Google readying to launch music services to rival iTunes

Music industry execs have been blabbing off to the business media that they are in conversations with both Amazon and Google about launching digital music services to rival iTunes. So what's new?!

Well, nothing much, for both Amazon and Google have little choice. They would be complete corportate loonies not to enter the market. But they would be wise to get their service right first and to offer real USP's versus iTunes. For breaking the iTunes hold on the market could prove as hard as breaking Microsoft's hold on the PC software market (and we all know what has happened to those that tried to challenge Microsoft - yep, they got squelched).

The most interesting leak is that Amazon seems closer to launching anything than Google and may even do so in Q2. Google seems to have slowed up a little. Perhaps they are being more cautious post the somewhat lame early launch of Google Video.